How Ghost Theory Came to Be

Elliot and Joe first met at secondary school in the early 2000s. After years of ignoring each other, they eventually ended up taking guitar lessons together, just the two of them with one teacher. It was almost as if working together was being forced upon them. Even during lessons, they were determined to ignore one another. By the end of school, they had to decide on a college course. Elliot chose music at a college of technology, while Joe wanted to study art. However, his artistic abilities were limited to a few stick figures. Joe’s mum then convinced him he was as artistic as a blind ape, and he switched to music at the same college as Elliot. As fate would have it, one of their first conversations was when they both discovered they’d be in the same course. At least they had each other amongst the strangers they were yet to meet.

The awkward gap between May and September 2009, when Elliot and Joe left school and started college, saw them once again cut off from communication. They spent those months enjoying their time off school, knowing their current friends would soon become old friends as they all embarked on their own paths at different colleges.

The day finally arrived when they would step inside the college, suddenly surrounded by strangers. Their small familiarity offered comfort and ultimately bonded them together. As the days and weeks rolled by, they found a routine of walking off to the local shop at lunch, mainly to feel some freedom from the mundane music theory that in reality was just a clock watching lesson. It became apparent that they both hated anything that meant they couldn’t have freedom and creativity. Being told what to do, when to do something, and when you were allowed to go home was essentially hell for both of them. If they could spend all day writing music, things would have been much easier, but it was more about paperwork and getting good grades on things they had no interest in. Not only that, but they knew they would never have a career in music, so it was all a waste of time.

It wasn’t long before Elliot mentioned his dad worked in a cinema. He used to love watching his dad work and got to see all the new films for free. Then Joe mentioned his YouTube channel making short gaming videos. Suddenly something clicked, they could combine Elliot’s love of film and Joe’s love of storytelling to create something that would let them escape the creativity sapping college. So sometime in early 2010, “The Editors Channel” was born. Just two 16 year-olds with bad haircuts, a Sony handy-cam, Joe’s mum’s laptop, and a bit too much ambition, they embarked on a journey that would in another 16 years transform into a limited company and their full time jobs. But more importantly, it gave them the freedom to create, which meant more than any official title.

Over the next two years, The Editors Channel produced around 200 videos. Their debut was “Paranormal Investigators,” with its incredibly inventive name, it surprisingly only gathered just shy of 100 YouTube views. Perhaps it was Elliot’s attempt at being Yvette Fielding, or the fact Joe still sounded like a toddler behind the camera, or maybe it was the fact neither of them had a clue what they were doing. However, looking back, they were already heading in the right direction 13 years before they realised it. Had they stuck to paranormal investigating from the start, they would have easily become one of the first paranormal investigation channels on YouTube. Unfortunately, Joe thought believing in ghosts was like believing in the tooth fairy, so the investigations became few and far between.

Over the next decade, they tried their hand at short films, short sketches, wedding photography, video marketing, a web series, camera reviews, photography videos, film reviews, ghost hunting and urban exploration. Some with more success than others, the one thing they learned was that story was everything. They even made videos about their own story, of how they fought off countless argumentative filmmakers, having short films ambushed at festivals and always being the runt of any group they were in. They knew they wanted to work together, and no matter what, they always would, but success just seemed like something only other people could gain. Every day was just another clock watching exercise until they could get out again with their cameras. But the problem was, that wasn’t giving them any kind of career, they had sacrificed everything in order to make YouTube videos, and now, at the point in their lives where moving out, getting a good job, and having stable relationships were more important than simply filming Elliot doing a Yvette Fielding impression, even if Joe’s balls had now dropped, nothing was working, and the sacrifice wasn’t worth it anymore.

After giving up for what felt like an eternity, they realised giving up for good was just emotional suicide. They had to remember it wasn’t for the money or views, it was all about freedom and enjoyment. Quickly, they found the love for what they were doing again and they thought hard about what could be something that allowed them some kind of consistency, something they had never found the art of. That thing would be Urbex. The weekly videos soon started being uploaded to the Xplore Vlogs channel; the videos were exciting but finding the best abandoned houses wasn’t a strong point of theirs. Some good videos were posted but eventually, again, they found even with consistency something was still missing.

Fast forward three years, to late 2021, they had the conversation that would give them the ultimatum: if they weren’t at least getting somewhere by the time they were 30, then they would need to find careers in something else, not stopping filming but it would need to take a back seat. The channel was doing okay, nearly 6,000 subscribers, which gave them hope, and a short film called “Imagination” had become their most viewed video with nearly 300,000 views. They knew it was a one hit wonder, but somehow their ambition still hadn’t given in. The channel had gone through many changes since 2018 when it was first created, from “Xplore Vlogs” to “Xplore Productions” to “Elliot & Joe”. With the “Elliot & Joe” version of the channel attempting to be their own “Netflix” filled with a few different shows, they had “Film Club,” which was a comedy sketch show where two idiots try to teach people how to make short films but ultimately fail. They had a series of photography videos and camera reviews, then a bunch of short films, and “Ghost Theory.”

“Ghost Theory” was something that made urban exploring feel like it had a purpose. Simply doing abandoned buildings was good fun, but it felt like there was more. They remembered all the attempts over the years to try a ghost hunting show. They figured adding the excitement of the abandoned would give Joe something to have an interest in. Ultimately, Joe loved the abandoned, and Elliot loved the paranormal. It was the only way Joe could convince Elliot to carry on with exploring abandoned buildings. But it was also the only way Elliot could convince Joe to do something with the paranormal without ridiculing it.

But “Ghost Theory” still wasn’t the main focus. In fact, they barely gave it a thought. The few videos they had made did do slightly better than anything else, but not by much. Elliot’s 30th birthday was approaching fast, with the time ticking they realised that Ghost Theory actually had a ring to it and would actually combine almost everything they had ever done into one. It had adventure, freedom, comedy, consistency, story, urban exploration and ghosts. So it was decided in September 2021 that “Ghost Theory” deserved its own channel.

One night in September, Joe was sat up at night in deep thought, looking through the Google Drive full of everything they had ever created. “Ghost Theory” felt right, it ticked all the boxes of everything they had ever worked towards. But making a new channel and starting all over again… again, just didn’t feel like the right move. The clock ticked away and reached 5:30 am, and it was like a lightbulb had just sparked to life in his half awake mind. Why make a new channel when they could simply rename the “Elliot & Joe” channel, just get rid of everything else, don’t bother with any of the other series they had in mind, and focus fully on “Ghost Theory”? It already had a small following, and it meant not starting all over again. It sounds obvious now, but everything is obvious in hindsight.

The next few weeks were spent doing nothing but filming for “Ghost Theory” every day and every night. The determination to have some kind of consistency meant having a good amount of videos ready to be uploaded even before the name change took place so that when it was finally ready, they could just start and have no gaps in uploads. The artwork was complete, around eight episodes were ready to go, and the official start date of Halloween was set. But on 10 October 2021, just one month before Elliot’s 30th, the excitement was too much. The channel hit exactly 6,000 subscribers, and the change was made. The videos went up for premiere, and the channel… tanked. Obviously, the viewers were just confused. The channel had gone through so many changes, there were too many different pockets of viewers wanting different videos. Many of them unsubscribed over the next few days after the change.

The first premiere dropped on the channel with four people watching. That was four more than the previous premiere they had done with the “Elliot & Joe” channel, so there was enough of an improvement to be convinced the changes had been a success. A week later, the next premiere started up, and already there were ten people watching. The week after, it was 25, and so on. Each episode was hitting numbers that Elliot and Joe had never seen before. The real turning point was the “Sinister School” episode. Joe mentioned to Elliot that no other channel in the UK was doing interview sections for their videos and that they could go somewhere after filming an episode to tell their story of what they remembered from the investigation. That episode pulled in a few thousand views in just a couple of days, so they went back to the school to do a livestream. During that live, they had the moment where they realised they had started something bigger than they imagined it could be. Exactly 139 people were watching them both stand in an abandoned school eager to get answers to what was at the top of the stairs from the original episode. It turned out at the top, the noises weren’t coming from some demon or mass murderer, but just a bunch of pigeons flapping their wings against a curtain pole. As boring as that was, it solidified the trust in the channel. If it’s just pigeons, then it’s just pigeons. Ghost Theory became something more than just another ghost hunting channel; it was a place where two best friends could be seen investigating the paranormal without the gimmicks. It was the accumulation of 13 years of failure, hard work, blood, sweat, and tears that led to the creation of Ghost Theory. It was created for the freedom and to give people something to be a part of.

--Thanks goes to Joe Goodall for this in-depth answer.

"Joe is far too important to be himself, so he is now also the third person." -- Joe. (Or maybe the Wiki Admin.)